2016 – Imprinting
The ten years old international Debrecen Artist in Residence examined the notion of imprinting with the help of invited artists in the summer of 2016. It loaned its subject (and the title of the exhibition too) from the theological and psychological phenomenon that serves for the description of a learning and adaptation method that occurs in the critical period of a given species. Interpreting the notion of imprinting in a wider context of social sciences as well as relating it to arts, the workshop was searching for the answer(s) to how the artists ‘adapt’ to and oppose the invasion of the pre-produced images. During the work the residence programme aimed to elaborate and discuss such strategies and practices that go against the image creation automatisms and question/point to the working system of the automatism itself. It used genuineness as the conceptual opposition of automatism, examining that in the age of “visual civilization” what dangers threaten the ability of artists to create genuine images and also to interpret and structure the world in a genuine way through their artworks. The work during the residence shed light on how strongly historical remembrance is present in the thinking of artists, primarily through their personal stories, and also on how the strategies, evolving through the artworks, can be honestly yet critically applied to motivate and unfold the imprinting of collective memory.
The artworks, created during the residence programme, are presented in two venues in Debrecen, in b24 Gallery and in MODEM. The relatively classically interpreted, finished, immanent artworks are presented in the art centre. The exhibited works with their various media examine the notion of imprinting from a wide perspective with self-reflection, and through their inventive implementations they continuously bind the possibilities of physical realisation and abstract meaning of imprinting. The artworks in the exhibition of MODEM present the moral chances of remembrance, forgetting, recalling, learning, adaption, adjustment as well as further-living and creation through established artistic practices
Members of DAIR 2016
Viola Fátyol / Balázs Faa / Tibor Gyenis / Sándor Imreh / Éva Mayer / Szilárd Miklós / Péter Pettendi Szabó / Katharina Roters / József Szolnoki / Dorottya Vékony / Janek Zamoyski
Artistic directors
Lajos Csontó / Szabolcs Süli-Zakar / Gabriella Uhl